The Healthy Incentives Program provides a dollar-for-dollar match for SNAP money spent on fruits and vegetables purchased at participating farmers markets, farm stands, mobile markets, and community supported agriculture (CSA) programs statewide. To date, the program has provided more than $9 million in fresh, healthy, local foods for low-income families, with that money going to support local farms. This means better health outcomes for some of the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable communities, and greater sustainability for local farms, allowing them to contribute to the local economy, steward farmland and protect our natural resources. For more information about HIP, see this fact sheet.

Please call or email your state legislators and the governor's office today and ask them to support $8.5 million in the fiscal year 2020 budget for HIP. If you’re not sure who your representative or senator is, you can find out here. See the 'Current action needed' section at the top of this page to see the current requests. This amount will support:

Year-round operation of the program. Consistency is critical to the success of HIP. The suspensions that have occurred have limited farmers’ ability to plan, and limited the effectiveness of the program in changing consumers’ eating habits.

Continued growth in participation. We are estimating 15% growth in participation.

Additional points-of-sale. Adequate funding would allow the program to open up participation to a few additional farms in areas of the state that are currently underserved by HIP.

All legislators need to hear from their constituents, even if they are already supportive of HIP. The Commonwealth has long supported equitable access to food, healthy eating, sustainable farms, local economic development, and natural resources conservation, and an investment in HIP supports all of these issues.

To help us keep track of which legislators are supportive, please let us know who you reached out to and how they responded, by emailing Rebecca Miller at the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative. If you have any questions, or would like more information about HIP or the campaign, contact Rebecca Miller at the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative, or click here.